Well, that was…. unexpected. The immature brat in me screams an appropriately melodramatic Episode III Vader “Noooooooooooo” while the thoughtful (though admittedly smaller) voice in me gives pause to contemplation. Is Mickey Mouse really the worst thing to happen to the Star Wars franchise? Could it be any more devastating than the canon fodder of having Jar Jar Binks unknowingly resigning the known galaxy to an oppressive Empire? A Lucas Metaphor? WWJJD?

George Lucas was rightfully deified when initially spinning the space genre on its head. Although it had elements that were similar to others of its ilk, Star Wars stood out as an easily-accessible, exciting, and masterfully thought-out universe. Before the rights were sold to anyone with any piece of fan fiction to air out like dirty laundry, Star Wars even enjoyed community additions, with a whole media-span of books and shows, spin-off ewok movies and games that actually improved and built upon the intricate universe. I fondly remember book titles like A Truce at Bakura and the awe-inspiring Tie Fighter computer game, a real first in its genre in addition to being just a great game by anyone’s standards. I honestly even enjoyed the Droids cartoon and the Wicket movies.

But then came the party crashers. All of a sudden, books were being written IN-BETWEEN other books, even in-between the movies. A simple story about a farmboy fighting his father turned into a convoluted mess of layered happenstance and explanations for things and characters that needed no introduction. For example, did you know that some form of infallible, aggressive AI had taken root in the second Death Star, correcting shots that targeted alliance cruisers during the final battle in Return of the Jedi? According to some dumb-ass book I read back in the day, it did, though it was foiled from achieving supremacy by those pesky rebels moments before it would have shrugged off its human captors and begun a dictatorial reign over the galaxy. That’s right. Death Star 2, the battle station, was almost the new Emperor. But it never happened. It’s just some fluff injected into the pre-existing story because you can’t have 3 minutes of peace in this universe. At least that bit of story-telling is quasi-interesting. Then you have books like “Tales from Jabba’s Palace” where twenty 3rd-rate aliens all explain Han Solo’s prison break from their own “unique” perspective. Swear to God. Now I’m sure we’re all interested in hearing what the frumpy muppet TWO FEET AWAY from that other frumpy muppet was thinking at the time of that thing that just happened, but I’m not a fan of Vantage Point: Star Wars style.

Where the video games used to be cool, interesting, where backstory and a chance to be a humble hero was provided instead of super-inflated embellishments on individuals and abilities, you now get overblown drivel. Rebel Assault was admittedly FMV nonsense, but you had Jedi Knight and Jedi Outcast and the piloting games like X-Wing to make up for it. Rogue Squadron was getting a bit iffy in terms of the story-related missions they sent you out on but you got to continue the tradition of being a participant in the machinations of this broad (and sometimes deep) universe with authentic-ish substance. Don’t get me wrong: I love the Galactic Battlegrounds mod on Age of Empires, but this is around the time period that the games began to get cookie-cutter in their quality, very little innovation going into these products that had the LucasArts seal of approval. KOTOR and the sequel? Fucking awesome. It traversed new grounds…. a prequel to the very generation of Star Wars that had been explored up until that point. Battlefront was a derivative of Battlefield, but still entertaining. Keep sliding…. Now, we’re getting games like The Force Unleashed, where some never-before-mentioned character (what? Vader’s mysterious Apprentice?) can knock two star destroyers together like Moe disciplining Larry and Curly (fuck Shemp). Jedi aren’t supposed to be that powerful! The slippery slope is getting slippier for the sake of marketing, not the integrity of the franchise. This idea is further established by any Star Wars racing game (pod racing was even released BEFORE Episode I) and the fact that they decided to replace the fantastic Star Wars Galaxies mmorpg with the vacuous The Old Republic. The latter, of which, has the uber-bland character-design influenced by these obnoxiously deficit CG models that seem to be popular nowadays. I think of “The Battle for Terra” cow-flop every time I see the simplistic animation of the Star Wars shows and CG movies that Lucas has been pumping out recently.

The frozen head of Walt Disney will use less offensive edits than Lucas.

My point is this: Lucas, or his authorized franchise helmsman, are making sacrifices in quality in an attempt to over-saturate my eyes, ears, and wallet with Star Wars bullshit. Not much new in this regard, but a man can have enough and it hadn’t always been this way. Sadly, the wookie “Life Day” Christmas special is no longer the hidden shame of the Star Wars universe. You’ve got an assembly line of crap being marketed at this very moment, directed solely at the next generation instead of attempting to include the original fans. Aren’t they up to like 17 series of collectible action figures now? They’ve surpassed 100 novels, and the number of bad video games are more than I can stomach. Focus, please? Quality, please?

And I haven’t even mentioned the original movie disservice and pandering…. Do I need to? Naw. Should I recap? Maybe. You had the original 1977, 1980, and 1983 movies boxed for your VCR enjoyment. Then they Remastered those to make spaceships less transparent and chopped up the squares around space battles. Okay, understandable. Then they remastered THAT and made a widescreen and full screen version, of which I got tricked into full-screen at the time because FULL sounded better than WIDE (but they screwed it up and there’s even a scene where the Tuskan Raider is invisible through Luke’s binoculars). Okay. And then the God-damn special editions came out in the late ’90s because, y’know, there wasn’t enough CG garbage on film to meet Lucas’ discerning eye. He can butcher his baby all he wants. This revision also gave the Sarlacc a beak for some reason and its now-flailing hentai tentacles had a taste for black men with moustaches. Jabba and Solo had a neat extended scene, which is cool, but we have a tradeoff where Han now shoots second with an “oh no, you di’ int” head maneuver. (This is because the audience can’t handle a scruffy-looking-nerf-herder who defends himself, not without provocation.) Anyways. What with the prequels released, extended cuts, and specialized boxed sets, the only thing Lucas could really do to pump more money out of the originals is to have a brand new release each time some small leap in viewing technology is made. (Hence 3D, Blu Ray, et cetera ad nauseum.) Not sick of it yet? Just wait until Mickey Mouse locks that shit up in a vault and artificially drives up the demand by controlling supply.

Oh that’s right. We were talking about Disney weren’t we? George Lucas made the conscious decision to Kid-ify Star Wars long before Disney bought it with lame-ass voice actors and explicitly stated plotpoints. That is, he consciously made the decision if he ever even saw past the boner he got from flexing Industrial Light and Magic’s muscles (the REAL star of Episodes I and II). I suppose what Disney intends to do with the material has yet to be seen but it can’t possibly be LESS focused than where the original driver led it: into a ditch paved with greenbacks. Funny enough, the most-liked episodes (V and VI) were some of the darkest in the series, and weren’t even directed by the L-man, himself, proof that George doesn’t have to have control for quality work to be had. The target audience has clearly dropped over the decades since then, though the main “age of appreciation” seemed to always have been quite low, reaching from 10 year olds all the way to the late 30-somethings. Despite the strong start Lucas, somehow,  someway, managed to enrage-lienate the nerd kingdom while simultaneously reducing the targeted audience to a paltry few of the original range (my impressions at least). Honestly, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I used to hope for new Star Wars material in the early days, that the fever would catch and we’d get even MORE outlets to appreciate what I thought would shrivel and die without fan support. My New Hope is that the bantha’s back will finally break due to mismanagement, though this is probably way too unrealistic to wish for.

Because money doesn't spend itself, Lucas had each character filmed in
separate locations and green-screened together. Originally, there were 
pangs of regret on their faces. Even the droid abomination.

Still, I can’t foresee Disney damaging this merchandising monster further. Although the new owner earned its credibility back in the day with its own brand of [literally] dark movies including the Black Hole, the Black Cauldron, and others, they also had mature themes woven seamlessly into a bunch of their “family-friendly” films. Cartoons, supposedly for kids, still had bite in them. Both Bambi and Dumbo’s mom died, Mufasa was murdered (and voiced by Vader), a 101 Dalmation overcoat sounds pretty sadistic, Sher Kahn was set on fire, Snow White was poisoned, Quasimodo lost the girl, Eric had sex with a mer-fish, and so on. Disney is no Don Bluth when it comes to dark cartoon drama, but still…. credit where credit is due. I’m not saying that dark=good stuff, but having the confidence in your audience (especially children) to invest some element of emotional maturity in your work to expand the story can make all the difference and that is something that Lucas seemed to have a distict deficiency of. With that in mind, Disney is in a unique position here, a fresh look on an old franchise, and because they are already making so much money, I really am curious as to what direction they’ll take. Wall-E, Tron, and the Pirates of the Carribean didn’t suck, all reasonably recent titles that pleased my particular tastes. It’s hard to remember that beyond the all-knowing far-reaching grasp of an antiquated mouse in strap-less overalls lies a decent company with a smattering of well-remembered products and the know-how of what fails and what succeeds. They certainly have the experience to back up crucial decision-making. With that in mind, I suppose it’s all a matter of what focus group and priority whining nerds like myself fall into according to Disney executives.

Well, all things considered…. let me be the first to welcome our Disney Overlords. And may I say, “Fix this shit.”? Make Star Wars good again since Lucas obviously can’t. OR squeeze it dry. Whatever. I got my use out of it at the times I needed the franchise so I’m giving explicit permission for Disney to pawn this “poo-doo” off on the next generation of impressionable kids if they so desire. I wonder what Star Trek is up to nowadays….